House votes to put new requirements on ballot initiatives, signature collectors

Updated Dec 13, 2018; Posted Dec 12, 2018

Joel Bissell | MLive.com

A bill passed by the House would put new requirements in place for a ballot petition to gather signatures and be placed on the ballot. Pictured are voting booths at First United Methodist Church of Kalamazoo, in Kalamazoo, Michigan on midterm election day, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018.

LANSING, MI -- Ballot petitions would need to make sure not more than 15 percent of their signatures come from any congressional district under legislation passed by the House late Wednesday night.

House Bill 6595, introduced last week, makes a number of changes to procedures around ballot petitioning in Michigan. The biggest change is a proportionality requirement that, per a floor amendment, would prohibit petitions from getting more than 15 percent of their signatures from any one congressional district.

Sponsor Rep. James Lower, R-Cedar Lake, said he was from a rural area of the state, and the new requirement “ensures statewide input” on whether an issue should get on the ballot.

“I think it’s really important that we get buy-in from all areas of the state as much as possible, particularly as a legislator from mid-Michigan, a more rural area, it’s not often people come up our way to try to get signatures on these initiatives,” Lower said.

The bill passed committee earlier on Wednesday with a 10 percent ceiling, but that was changed to 15 percent on the House floor.

The bill as passed would also move up the timeline so the Board of State canvassers would have to rule on a petition’s sufficiency by 100 days before the election, require any legal challenges to directly to the Supreme Court within seven days, require a 100-word summary earlier in the process and require circulators to file signed affidavits indicating whether they’re paid or volunteers, with a misdemeanor penalty for those who misrepresent themselves.

Some of those provisions were also changed on the floor. The time to sue went from three to seven days, for example, and the time by which the Board of State Canvassers had to act went from June 1 to 100 days before an election.

The bill drew opposition, though, from some members who spoke out against it on the floor.

Rep. Vanessa Guerra, D-Saginaw, said called the bill the “most ill-crafted piece of legislation” she’s seen since serving in the House, citing how quickly it moved and a lack of input from stakeholders.

“Frankly there are so many constitutional defects in this bill I can hardly count them,” Guerra said.

Howrylak, a Republican who voted against the bill, said he has been involved in petitioning government and knows how hard it already is.

“It’s a process that’s enshrined in the state constitution, and I’m afraid that this bill creates hurdles,” Howrylak said.

He pointed out that after the signature-gathering process on the front end the entire state gets to weigh in on every ballot proposal through a statewide vote.

Rep. Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor, spoke in opposition to the bill.

“It may seem like the right thing to do for political expediency. It will be the wrong thing to do in the end... it will not always benefit you,” Rabhi said.

People including Rep. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, had raised concerns about whether the Secretary of State, which currently studies a sample of signatures to determine if a proposal has enough to get on the ballot and would have a hard time ascertaining what percentage are from what places that way.

A change on the House floor made it so petitions submitted to the Secretary of State would have to be sorted by congressional district.

Lower said he felt comfortable those concerns were addressed, while Moss said it was still unworkable.

In committee the bill got support from the West Michigan Policy Forum but was opposed by the ACLU of Michigan and Right to Life of Michigan. Lower said Right to Life of Michigan was neutral on the House-passed version.

The House also approved a series of bipartisan bills making changes to the ballot petition and signature collection process: